


The High Road

by vextant



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/F, Interwar Espionage, Motorcycles, Slash doesn't hit until the post-script
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 20:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17794244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vextant/pseuds/vextant
Summary: The record for crossing the continental United States on a motorcycle is eleven days.Howard wants Peggy to make it in seven.(She runs into a little Russian trouble on the way.)





	The High Road

**Author's Note:**

> My WomenOfMCU Valentine's Day gift for tumblr user ironmongersdaughter ! I picked out Peggy, Natasha, angst, action, and historical AU from your list of likes, hope you enjoy!
> 
> Many thanks to layersofsilence for major inspiration, providing a truly excellence motorcycle for Peggy, and for listening to me scream while working on this.

**An Arizona Road, 1926**

She knows she shouldn’t, but the rush of water sounds so tempting that Peggy pulls off to the side of the road for just a moment. Her red bandana, the one she’s had covering her mouth and nose since Oklahoma, is thick with rest dust. So are her goggles. She flips the kickstand of her Ace four cylinder down and heads to the stream.

The fresh air is crisp and chill once she pulls her bandana down and her goggles up. It makes her eyes water, but she can’t waste much time enjoying it — she’s on a mission, racing against the clock. Peggy was only given seven days to ride across the country from New York. Tonight is day five, nearly six. Time is very much against her now. 

As she kneels beside the water, it occurs to her that she doesn’t know exactly where she is. It shouldn’t matter, of course — it should be simple to find Malibu once she’s far enough west. 

The trouble is getting there. 

Peggy knows she should be more concerned with the quality of the water out here — but truth be told, there isn’t much industry in the area to contaminate it. And she’s thirsty. The desert’s dried out her throat like she’s never expected. She’d nearly croaked like a bullfrog in an attempt to speak to the poor gentleman who’d filled her fuel tank last, the embarrassment lasted her nearly one hundred miles. 

She fills the flask and drinks it all down, and then fills it up once again. The water isn’t cold, per se, but it is cooler than the air around her, still clinging to the last vestiges of heat from the day. It’s the most refreshing thing she’s hard in ages. She feels the tightness in her shoulders and arms start to barely let go, and relief floods into her fingertips — her palms ache from gripping the handlebars so tightly. 

Who knew that motorbiking across the country on an impossible time crunch could be so exhausting?

It’s inappropriate to joke — lives are at stake. Even more so, considering her cargo. Unconsciously, she glances back towards her motorbike, and the large silver canister strapped atop the saddlebag, glittering in the starlight. The visual confirmation reassures her that her payload is still secure. 

Speaking of bullfrogs, the creekbed is more quiet than she would expect for this time of night. After all, it’s not a busy road, and even her roaring engine has been shut up for long enough for the local fauna to begin chirping and ribbiting to each other again. But there’s nothing, deadly silent like the world had frozen around her in an Arizona snowglobe, stars hanging still from the sky like they were painted there. 

A soft breeze nearly startles her. It rustles the rough grasses gathered on the banks of the stream, and gently sifts the dirt about thirty feet to her right. 

No.

That’s a footstep.

Peggy’s honestly surprised it’s taken anyone this long to catch up with her. She was under the impression she was making truly horrible time. 

“Can I help you?” She asks the darkness, although she really doesn’t expect her intruder to announce themselves. 

Except they do, sort of. A sharp  _ crack _ echoes past her left ear and leaves her with a high-pitched ringing. It takes everything she has not to flinch — a hell of a warning shot. 

The bike’s too far behind her for her to reasonably expect to reach her pistol, still nestled in its sling and strapped to the handlebars. In retrospect, keeping it anywhere but on her person at all times is incredibly arrogant and rather short-sighted on her part. 

There’s a short knife on the inside of her boot. It’ll have to do — it’s all she has against whatever’s lurking in the dark. 

“You can come out,” she says as she draws the knife, “I won’t hurt you if I don’t have to.”

An attacker — tall, broad, a man by the looks of him — swings at her from her left. It’s easy enough to crouch and then pop up again at the last moment, using her momentum to toss him into the creek. 

Peggy whips around. It’s dark, but she left her bike idling, thank Heaven, so the beam splits the night and highlights two others coming right for her. 

It’s a rather predictable two-man attack — one high, one low. She has no weapon except the three inches of steel in her right hand. One, the smaller of the two, has a rifle strapped to his back — he must be the one that fired at her earlier. 

  
The two of them swing in synch, clearly trained as a unit, and rather than duck again Peggy sidesteps and dashes up the bank. Better to defend her cargo with — no one has yet made any demands of her, which means that they’re not here for her at all. 

They lose no time in charging after her. She realizes that it would be faster just to leave them in the dust, and swings a leg over her bike — 

Another shot rings out from the dark. It takes Peggy off guard, and for a moment she’s sure she’s been injured. She opens her eyes just as a third shot comes and lands in the dirt a couple inches from her front tire. It’s too precise a shot to risk escape. 

One of the assailants charges with his hands out, aiming to ram the bike over with her still astride. Peggy, in all her wisdom, lets him. He grunts and she prays, tucking her leg up and twisting to land flat on her back with a grunt. The bike hits its side with a heavy thunk. Over her, the goon looks almost surprised that it had worked at all. Peggy stabs him in the throat and kicks him off before he can bleed on her too much. 

“Should not have done that.” Someone says to her as she frees her knife and clambers to her feet. It’s another of the goons, the biggest one that she tossed into the water, now mad as a wet cat about it. There’s something off in the way he speaks, but she has no time to analyze.

She’s still alive, by some miracle. She intends to put it to good use. 

It’s Peggy’s turn to be on the offensive. Brighter men than these have sparred with her and lost. Charging for the closest, the wet one, she waits until he’s put his fists up to defend his face and then she ducks low again, slicing into the back of his thigh. She knows she’s cut deep enough when he grunts and sinks to one knee. 

With one arm holding his behind his back and her knife at his throat, she snarls, “Who do you work for?”

He grunts, “This is not your— your business, Margaret Carter.” 

It’s easy to place then, an accent, hidden by training but strong enough to reappear under duress. Soviets. By the angry looks of the other man, she’s holding the one in charge. 

What the  _ hell _ are the Soviets doing involved in this? 

“Oh, you’re just tracking me across the bloody continent for what? Kicks?” It’s hard not to get angry — she’s losing time, this was only supposed to be a pit stop. The longer she takes, the more critical this mission gets. The smaller goon with the rifle is reaching for her defeated bike. “Touch anything and I’ll kill him.”

He  _ tsks _ and draws away slowly, putting his hands up. “We are not here for you.”

So they know more than she’s giving them credit for. But she sees an opportunity since he’s feeling talkative. “Who do you work for?”

Her captive coughs, “We will tell you nothing.”

“You, be quiet.” She presses down on the knife just the smallest bit more and nods to the other one, “You. Who do you work for?”

He hesitates. It’s hard to see, exactly — the three of them are dressed in slacks and dark leather jackets, likely to better blend in with American travelers weary from the road. A newsboy cap is slunk slow over his forehead, and a black scarf is tied around his nose and mouth to keep out the dust. In the dim light he looks young, inexperienced. She almost feels pity for him, he looks genuinely distressed at the dead body slumped over the bike, and his commander at the mercy of a foreign operative. Maybe it’s his first mission in the field. 

Maybe it’s all a ruse. She’s been manipulated before, and espionage is no place for soft hearts. 

“Let him go,” says the young man. His accent is much more American than the others. If it had been just him speaking, she might’ve been fooled more easily.  “Let him go, and I will tell you everything.”

“Speak your piece first, and then we’ll see about negotiating.”

In the time it takes for her to speak, he swing the rife into his hands and shoots his own commander stone-dead. 

Peggy is startled back. The sudden weight causes her to drop the commander to the ground, and in that split second where she’s composed herself, the young man has drawn Peggy’s own pistol from the holster strapped to the bike. 

“Your turn to talk.” He says, and steps forward. 

She doesn’t know what to do. It’s possibly the first time in her life that she’s reeled like this, but that level of ruthlessness is . . . unprecedented, even for the Soviets. 

So she takes her own step forward, stepping over the body without looking at it to much. “And what would you have me say?”

Time isn’t on her side — she’s killed a man today, and indulging this one has taken long enough. They stalk towards each other like street cats fighting for territory, hackles raised and teeth bared. 

She’s close enough to see his eyes. Green. And not a man’s at all. The emotional ploy is suddenly thrown into cold context — after all, it’s a woman who knows best how to catch another woman off guard. Still, Peggy refuses to think of them as equals. Counterparts, perhaps, both underestimated and counting on it. 

At this range, the Soviet seems hesitant to shoot. Perhaps she really is after information rather than blood. 

The time is all that Peggy needs. Luckily, the Soviet woman’s got the pistol in both hands — perhaps a leftover from rifle handling, perhaps just the way they train them in the the USSR. Peggy snaps her arm up, squeezing her upper arm against her side to wrap her opponent’s wrists and keep them there. Without a second thought, she slams her forehead into the other woman’s face, aiming for the bridge of her nose. 

She doesn’t go down, but she does drop the pistol and stumble back. Peggy kicks the gun out of the way and dashes right at her. 

The Soviet is right there to meet her. Peggy sees she missed her target — instead of breaking the girl’s nose, she’s left a nasty bruise on her cheekbone below one of her eyes. Good. She’s also lost her hat, and her hair is red and wild and coming loose from a short braid. Tearing down her scarf, she snarls a Slavic curse at Peggy as they slam into one another. 

Peggy catches a fist to the ribs and grunts. She retaliates by kneeing the Soviet in the stomach. They’re near the same height and size — perhaps her opponent is a little more lithe, but they’re quite evenly matched in terms of strength. But the other woman is faster, and she realizes too late. 

Her opponent gets under her and uses the momentum to toss Peggy over her shoulders. Peggy hits the ground on her hip with a grunt — she’s going to feel that tomorrow — and scrambles to her feet as the Soviet hurries towards the pistol. 

She’s right in front of her bike. The payload is still strapped to the saddlebag, a gleaming silver canister, seemingly unperturbed by the violence. 

It might be the only choice she has left.

“Hands up!” The Soviet shouts. She’s only got one hand on the pistol this time, but her aim is steady. 

Peggy raises the canister in front of her — slowly, carefully. She doesn’t wait for recognition. “You know what this is, don’t you? Nitroglycerin. You shoot me, I shake this, we both go up.”

The other woman pauses. Glances deliberately at the canister, before her green eyes flick back to Peggy. Immediately, Peggy knows that she knows exactly what it is and what it’s capable of. 

“One of the most volatile chemicals on Earth.” Peggy emphasizes. “Do you really want to risk it?”

“What about your mission?”

“Oh, don’t you try to pull my heartstrings now.”

To her credit, the Soviet drops the act immediately, her face settling into grim neutrality. 

While her secret weapon is certainly threatening, it doesn’t seem enough to stop the fighting — rather, it’s settled into an old-fashioned standoff. It’s an appropriate atmosphere for it, anyways.

“You’re very good, you know.”

“I know.”

“How do you manage to sound so American? I’ve never managed to get the ‘r’s right.”

“It does no good to sound like I’m from Moscow.”

“Are you from Moscow?”

She doesn’t answer.

Peggy supposes it’s good the Soviet knows her worth, but shutting down flattery like that means that Peggy needs to think of a new approach to end this and get back on the road towards Malibu, where she can drop off the nitroglycerin where it needs to go and get to a phone. 

“You could at least tell me what your name is and what you want with me.”

“I am here for that,” she jerks the pistol to the canister in Peggy’s hands, “Not for you.”

Now they’re getting somewhere. “So, you’ve orders to stop me? I assume that’s what this little display was about.”

The Soviet’s upper lip ticks towards a scowl. She’s getting angry. “Of course I will stop you.”

“Just you?” Peggy gestures to the bodies.

“Dead weight.”

“Certainly are now.”

Silence settles over them again, a mutual frustration. Peggy’s running over the facts in her mind — she can see the redhead doing to the same behind the barrel of the gun. Her aim hasn’t wavered. 

Looking at her now, Peggy can see that the Soviet is quite beautiful, in a very dangerous and very exciting way. It’s no wonder she chose — was chosen for? — espionage. Probably has male agents on all sides falling over her.

“Well,” Peggy sighs, cutting herself off from that unproductive train of thought, “This has been a ball, but I absolutely must be going.” 

She nudges the dead man off her bike. Walking around to stand it back up, she makes sure to keep one eye on the gun barrel. It would be nice to have her pistol back, but she doesn’t have too much hope at this point. 

Something  _ cracks _ — the bike shudders in her hand, a pop and a hiss from her front tire. The gun barrel in the Soviet’s hand is smoking.

“You will never make it to Reno.”

Peggy takes a moment to curse to herself. On a flat tire, she’ll never make it in the next two days. She just needs to limp to the next town, possibly steal a car — she’s sure Howard’ll pay for it. With a stern look, she sets a hand on her hip, “Good thing I’m headed to Malibu.”

For only a moment, the Soviet looks puzzled. But it passes quickly, and soon her face is unreadable stone once again. “There are no armaments facilities in Malibu.” 

She can see the moment the redhead knows that she’s said too much. There are small movements in her face, her stance, the way she changes grip on the gun. 

Peggy knows a chance when she sees it. “No, there aren’t. But there is a very sick man with a deadly heart condition. I’ve been tasked by his father to bring this to him, as medicine. Ask any physician, they’ll tell you.”

The other woman doesn’t answer right away. Chances are that she’s trying to measure the likelihood of Peggy telling the truth against the merits of an emotionally-laden lie.

“I know you can’t believe me.” She says. “But please listen. This mission is urgent, this man is dying and his father — his father would never forgive me. Accompany me if you like, you’ll see that I’m not lying to you.”

Seconds tick by, agonizing, as the redhead thinks it over — but at this point Peggy can see no other way. Right now, priority one is to try and save Tony Stark’s life, everything after that can be dealt with in due time. 

It’s hard not to seem impatient. 

“Fine,” the Soviet grumbles. She lowers the pistol but doesn’t put it away. “I have my own motorcycle, parked in the brush. I will drive.”

Peggy nods, doesn’t even ponder a word of thanks as she unstraps her saddlebags and tosses them over her shoulder. With the canister in hand, she’s ready to follow this — this temporary ally. 

It feels like treason to just leave her bike there, lying on its side in the dirt. But it’d slow her down to take it with her on a popped tire. Maybe, after all of this is over and she and the Soviet don’t end up killing each other in their sleep, she can come back for it. Or bother Howard into buying her a new one. 

The redhead leads her up the road. Neither of them have torches, there’s only the fading light of her own bike’s floodlight to go by. 

“You can call me Peggy.” She says, to no response. After a few moments, she tries again. “I’d rather like to know whose silent company I’m enjoying.”

They stop at a large patch of brush on the side of the road, where Peggy can see a bike hidden in the branches, black and chrome and stripped of all its branding. The Soviet motions at Peggy — with her own bloody pistol — and together they free it and push it back onto the road.

As the redhead swings astride and coaxes it to life, Peggy just barely hears her say, “It’s Natalia.” 

“Just Natalia?”

Natalia motions for her to get on behind her. “Just Natalia.” 

Peggy obliges, and holds on as they set off.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**A Hotel Outside Malibu, Three Days Later**

It doesn’t look like much from the outside. Honestly, as Peggy follows Natalia in, she finds the interior just as depressing. 

“Are you sure you’ll be alright here?” She asks. “You know whose dime this is on, right?”

“I would rather not have him think I owe him anything.” 

“He owes us his life, Natalia. Said so himself.”

“Yes, and I’m sure I will put that to great use someday.” Natalia saunters towards the desk with that small, secret smile on her face — only the second time Peggy’s seen it, the first being the early hours of the morning when the doctor announced to the both of them that the nitroglycerin was working, and that Tony Stark was expected to start on a long, slow road to recovery. 

“Either way, I must thank you for the ride.”

Natalia gives a soft, deep chuckle. “It was my pleasure.”

The desk worker comes over with a form for her to fill out. Peggy notices right away that Natalia is sparse on the details, becomes ‘Natalie Rushman’ from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 

Without the stress of a man’s life hanging in the balance, it’s difficult not to find Natalia attractive. She has an allure that Peggy can barely describe, an air of competency and mystery that surrounds her like an aura. Were they on the same side of things, Peggy might be singing a very different tune.

Regardless, they’ve been through something together. She’s sorry to see her go. In another life, they may have even been friends — but of course, in this life, on this Earth, their jobs make that impossible. Better to have loved and lost, and all that. 

“And you, miss?” The worker says with a smile and an offered card.

“Oh no, not for me,” Peggy shakes her head, “I’ll just be going.”

“So soon?” Natalia says with a coy smile. 

Peggy rolls her eyes. “Yes, I’ve got to get back to New York.”

“Not even a proper good-bye.” Natalia  _ tsks _ . The way her barely-there accent separates it into two words makes Peggy smile. “One more night?”

She turns those sharp green eyes on Peggy and waits for the correct answer — the only answer.

“Fine.” Peggy motions for the desk clerk to give her a card.

“No need, she will stay with me.” Natalia says.

“Oh, will she?”

“She will.”

The clerk nods, flipping through his book. He stops and sets his jaw. Bracing to tell a customer something unpleasant. “I’m sorry, Miss . . . Rushman, I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

Peggy start to say, “Oh, that’s alright—”

“And why not?”

“Well, uh,” The clerk swallows, “We’ve only got the one room left. A— uh, a single queen bed.”

Natalia smirks and nails Peggy with the brightest, greenest bedroom eyes she’s ever seen. “That’s not going to be a problem."

**Author's Note:**

> >The use of nitroglycerin was inspired by the film Wages of Fear. It's also apparently used as a medicine for heart conditions and has been for over a century, although I admit that I did not dig too deep because the idea was too cool and I got excited.  
> >Peggy's (abandoned, later replaced) motorcycle is a 1923 Ace Four Cylinder.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks for reading! :)


End file.
